Five Freaky Stories That Are Totally True

By Abby Norman on October 26, 2015

With Halloween just around the corner, ‘tis the season for creepy stories and our favorite horror movies marathoned on TV. Sometimes, though, the scariest tales are rooted in fact. After all, some of our favorite movie villains were based on real serial killers or criminals.

But what about the truly freaky stories in history that should get their own movies? Here are five freaky stories that are totally true:

The Wandering Soul Tapes

In Vietnamese culture, it is essential to properly bury a loved one in their home land so as to ensure their contentment in the afterlife. If not, the belief is that the deceased’s soul will wander aimlessly as it tries to find its way home.

During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were aware that the conflict would take many fighting far from their home villages, meaning that if they died, they most certainly would end up as wandering souls. U.S. forces exploited these beliefs as a psychological scare tactic.

North American troops created a tape of disembodied, tormented voices and played it on loudspeakers as they flew planes over the jungle. Known as “Ghost tape number ten,” the fear tactic had been specifically created by sound engineers who drew from methods used for spooky television and radio broadcasts.

The voices — some of them children — called out to the Vietnamese warning them to flee, lest they end up damned to hell.

It worked, and often led to Vietnamese troops running from their positions in a panic, which was precisely what the American troops had hoped for. Even after the Vietnamese soldiers figured out it was a recording played from flyovers, it was so unnerving that they would abandon their posts just to escape the eerie sounds that played on an endless loop throughout the night.

Abby Norman is a writer based in New England, currently writing a memoir for Nation Books. Her work has been featured on The Rumpus, The Independent, Cosmopolitan, Medium, Seventeen, Romper, Bustle, and Quartz.